It was natural, therefore, that, after the civil war of the Ohnin era, Sakai should be considered safer to live in than Kyoto. Sakai became the asylum for the civilisation of Japan, to save it from utter destruction. Poets, painters, musicians, and singers, who had found living in the turbulent metropolis intolerably hard, sought shelter in Sakai, and there occupied themselves quietly with their own professions. Various handicrafts, such as lacquering, porcelain-making, and weaving were all started there with enormous success. Especially as to the weaving, it is said that this industry, which had once flourished and been afterwards abandoned in Kyoto on account of the political disturbances there, was not only continued at Sakai, but also improved by the Chinese weavers, who repaired to the city and taught the natives the art of making various costly textiles of Chinese invention. In some respects the textiles of the Nishijin, now one of the specialties of Kyoto, may be said to be the continuation of the Sakai looms. Another kind of industry, which developed in the city in the later Ashikaga period, was the manufacture of fire-arms. Immediately after the introduction of fire-arms by a Portuguese in the year 1541, a merchant of Sakai happened to learn the art of making guns somewhere or other in Kyushu, and after his return to the city he began to practise there the business he had learnt. Sakai thus became the origin of the propagation, in central and eastern Japan, of the use of the new arm. From what has been described above, the reader would easily understand that the intellectual level of the citizens of Sakai stood much higher than that of the average Japanese of that time. Wit and pleasantry were the accomplishments highly prized there, so that the city produced out of its inhabitants a large number of versatile diplomatists, story-tellers, and buffoons. As their economic conditions were very easy, the social life of the city was polished, enlightened, and even luxurious. The manufacture of sake, the Japanese favourite drink made from rice, was highly developed in the city, and the fame of the Sakai-tub was renowned the country round. To protect the brewers, the Shogunate issued an order forbidding the importation of sake into the city. The tea-ceremony and the flower-trimming, two fashionable pastimes already in vogue at that time, were eagerly practised here by wealthy merchants. Many famous experts in this sort of amusement were found among the inhabitants of the city, and they were generally connoisseurs highly skilled in the fine arts, as Sen-no-Rikyu, for example. Various curios, native and foreign, were bought and sold there at exorbitant high prices.